Mondays Musing

Honestly, life is shit. People will let you down and your plans will fail 99% of the time. I’m not a pessimist, I’m a selective Stoic and it is impossible for me to be optimistic about anything I have no influence over. Does that make me a control freak? Who knows?

The wonderful thing about saying this, is that once you admit that all we’re really here for is to pass time until we die, then every moment actually becomes a little more significant. We begin to value time and people more, and our expectations are no longer unrealistic. And if your expectations are low, then logically, your satisfaction is high. Right? At least then you can’t (or shouldn’t) be angry or disappointed when life shoves you down the rabbit hole. No, because all those crazy situations that will probably hurt you, were, after all, expected.

The problem though, is that calling yourself a Stoic, an Optimistic, a Pessimist or a Realist is all fine and dandy, until you realise you don’t always stick to what you say. And what’s the point of believing in something if you don’t actually translate that into values and actions? Marcus Aurelius’ stated in his Meditations that;

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Essentially, stop hoping that things will change, that life will somehow magically pan out and all of your dreams will come true. It won’t happen, but at the end of it all, and when faced with mountains of anxiety, stress and misery, we must remind ourselves that we will eventually be just fine. And through this, though it can be pretty f**cking difficult at times, it will gradually become easier and easier to develop a calm, peaceful mind no matter what it may be facing. Or so I hope.